Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 122
Zuziana cooed, Creative as well as handsome? What a man!
Her kind of man very nearly lost his head as an unseen Dragon ambushed them from below, driving the smaller Azure against the flank of a small Island. Wing-struts snapped; Ri’arion cursed, holding the Dragon at bay with a swipe of his sword aimed at the searching muzzle. Zip skittered away, running upside-down over the bubbly ragions’ backs before throwing herself into a sweeping backward dive. Furious Dragons roared port and starboard as her abrupt manoeuvre whipped her out from beneath their noses, causing a decent collision between several hundred tonnes of indignant Dragonflesh.
Slobs. Your mothers whelped dim-witted boulders, sneered her Dragoness as the Azure gave them the slip.
Wow, said the Human within. We need to work on our insults, Dragoness.
Freaking Ancient Dragons, this was the time to learn to talk to herself? Zuziana furled her wings and let her superior aerodynamic shape sweep her away from the conflict, meantime panting hard to replenish her oxygen. The hard part lay just ahead.
LEANDRIAL!!
A faraway bellow shook her from tail to wingtips. White flared, together with a gorgeous yet deadly crescendo of Harmonic magic, only Leandrial had somehow contrived to modulate her attack to perfectly wash past the fleeing Azure Dragoness. Crazy. Ragions evaporated. Islands exploded. Boulders and entire chunks of Island came spinning out of the boiling black smoke overhead.
Suk’itarix rallied her Dragons with a fierce cry. Our ally! Be strong, my kin!
Leandrial surged out of the Cloudlands ten miles distant as though she were a freshwater trout leaping for a tasty fly.
Two fledglings bolted and were snaffled up by Thoralian’s Dragons, those neither caught up by the wash nor fleeing the flying debris. The rest drew in tighter, faithfully chasing the Green and her Dragonwing down into the Cloudlands. Fireballs vanished in the murk as the dank clouds closed overhead, and the Lesser Dragons hurtled down into a realm none of them had ever seen, bar Zuziana.
Yet as she descended, she heard one of the Dragons cry out in a harsh, guttural language, Chase them, my kin. Destroy!
Dark, chittering magic surged against her mind, carrying echoes of the Rift-Storm. Ri’arion shouted angrily as their shields guttered; only a massive rallying effort prevented wholesale collapse. He kept their Dragonwing on song with a steely touch of his mind, drawing the command close, warning against predators. Yet Zip was searching ahead with her senses, hearing an echo of urzul from somewhere faraway, below. Mercy. What did Western Islanders say – meat fallen from the spit-roast into the flames was best eaten charred?
They broke into the upper layers to the awesome sight of Leandrial’s paws churning toward them and many huge, shadowy bodies closing in from the South.
The Land Dragoness’ mouth yawned hugely. In here. Quick!
Fra’anior’s teeth, what are those? Ri’arion gritted out, before yelling at a Grey-Green, Hold that hatchling! This is Leandrial.
And those others? Tari snarled.
Theadurial-infested hunters, Leandrial thundered. Deep-Runners of enemy Clans. Now, are you with me?
Her mouth loomed over the Dragonwing, then gently drew shut as the Dragons made their landings on her tongue.
Leandrial declared, Now, I shall show these ugly flatfish that I am not for nought called a Welkin-Runner. The beat of her tail lashed them away, back toward the North and the safety of greater depth.
Zip’s relieved laughter startled more than a few of the Dragons. She said, Little ones, climb into the cheek-pockets for safety. There. Go there. Organise yourselves, Dragons, and place the eggs carefully. Those who are able, join Ri’arion in the shielding. For Leandrial alone, she added, Today, thou shalt succour eggs and younglings by thy mighty right paw, Leandrial. Thus, thou art mother to us all.
* * * *
Ardan’s defiance brought out the Dragoness in Tixi. The Marshal had thought to break him, but she had many other problems, for the war swept ever closer. He endured two more cruel torture-sessions with her before she left for the war, and the boys finally prevailed upon the Curator to allow Ardan access to the library on the third level below the harem living-quarters.
Often, he gazed to the far North, where Aranya had disappeared. How could star-life, or Dragon-life, be snuffed out so abruptly? Surely her fate was not thus circumscribed? The Amethyst Dragoness had always risen before. She possessed a talent for surviving the most improbable adversity, such as being chained to a rock and tossed off a league-tall cliff by that traitorous Jeradian who had dared to court her afterward. Blunder, o Princess. Especially since he was so unbiased in all matters pertaining to the Immadian beauty, and his own history … Ardan gritted his teeth. He believed her beauty would rise like the fabled dawn-star discussed in the ballad he was just reading.
To rise anew.
Ardan himself had risen from the flames of Naphtha Cluster. He still healed at Dragon speed. Whence emerged the strength of Shadow, if not from the Great Onyx himself?
If only Fra’anior would speak to set him free of this bondage.
His eyes flicked back to the scrolleaf. Arm thyself with knowledge, warrior. He must learn the history of Thoralian, but so far, the Curator chose to deny him access to the genealogies. How long since they had crossed the Rift? Three weeks?
Sapphire nosed the scroll, saying, “Hoo-lee.”
“What?”
A dagger-sharp claw rose to tap a precise spot on the text. “Hoo-lee,” said the dragonet, firmly.
The dawn-star rune! Cold sweat pearled Ardan’s brow.
* * * *
For eight days there was little time or energy for detailed discussion. They fled, hunted by the relentless pack of Deep-Runners. Leandrial wanted to break out of the Northern Kahilate through the Vassal States that pinched in along its south-western border Islands, to where she said the voices of Welkin-Runners had identified the rising of a ‘great power from the deep’. From the snippets and sounds of battle she had overheard from thousands of leagues away, Leandrial posited that the Shell Clan Land Dragons had laid siege to the S’gulzzi, seeking the First Egg, while the S’gulzzi employed the Egg’s magic to raise themselves up out of their habitual cracks on the floor of the Island-World, and strengthened their slaves, the Theadurial, for the fight. All-out war raged beneath the Vassal States and the Southern Kahilate, perhaps spreading as far afield as Garashoon, Indaroon with its famously red Fire-People, and The Immovables, an Island-Cluster which six centuries before had settled in a favourable location above the largest gold, diamond and meriatite mines in Herimor, and refused to budge ever since.
Just around the time of the Dragonfriend, Leandrial intoned with inflated draconic inscrutability.
Zip kicked Leandrial’s cheek, despite knowing that in her Human form she could not possibly do the slightest damage with such a gesture.
The Land Dragoness thereupon added that The Immovables were also called the ‘Inscrutables’ for their unique population of Lesser Dragons who excelled at the art of glamour. No living creature knew what the Immovable Dragons looked like, only that any army which had ever tried to invade, had been annihilated and sunk without a trace.
Perfect allies, Ri’arion suggested dryly.
The Princess kissed him until she deemed herself satisfied, leaving a gasping, red-faced, speechless monk in her wake. Ha. Who ruled his Islands?
Besides, she was addicted to mischief-making. Turn Leandrial into a living nursery? Marvellous! The Land Dragoness seemed quite tickled – literally and figuratively – to have seventeen eggs tucked into her cheek-pockets, and fourteen hatchlings playing wingtips-and-tumbling across the breadth of her tongue. They were awfully cute little fire-breathers, Zip agreed; only, some of the adults insisted on treating her as one of the fledglings. At least they were impressed with her scales, her inner Dragoness snorted fierily. And her battle technique. That had sealed her status in the group as just below massive Tari and her even more gargantuan shell-mother, Brityx.
Around Brityx, she was so overshadowed that Zip had an odd impression of being a toddler needing to hug the nearest knee.
Right now, Brityx cracked open an eye right behind Ri’arion and said, without preamble or warning, “Legend has it that Thoralian belonged to a line of powerful Eastern Shapeshifters, hailing from a little-known leeward quaternary pro-cyclical Island-system on a three-decade diurnal Blue-linked migratory pattern, called Sonax, which –”
“Uh … slow down,” said Zip, trying to sort out the little Herimor geography she knew, in her mind.
Leandrial showed her a mental map of the Northern Kahilate. Three-quarters of the way down on its far eastern flank, she drew a flat, intersecting oval with bright arrows. In comparison to the main territory, her demarcation was tiny. Here, little one. This is the basic orbital cycle of Sonax, as best it is understood. The Archipelago crosses into the Kahilate for two years, two months and five days of every thirty years, approximately. This is due to an additional semi-harmonic magical factor which causes the Islands to misbehave … she laughed brightly. Alright, Azure. Little wingflips for hatchlings.
Zip scowled sullenly at Leandrial’s cheek-wall, flicking her long chestnut locks out of her face. Thanks, mighty teacher.
Ri’arion said, “I love draconic detail, Brityx. Can we speak later?”
“Shapeshifters,” sniffed Brityx, clearly underwhelmed by Zip’s reaction, even though she appeared to have a fiery spot for the Azure Dragoness. “Briefly, the Sonaxite star began to wax brightly perhaps two hundred years ago under the leadership of a powerful old Marshal named Thoralian. But the Marshal was betrayed and mortally wounded in battle with his arch-enemy and shell-uncle, Goralian. In the simplified version of the legend, Thoralian returned to a secret clutch and breathed of his draconic fire-spirit into three eggs, each of which hatched a perfect replica of the original Thoralian.”
The huge Dragoness turned to regard her shell-daughter. “Any Dragon worth their wings will tell you Thoralian – be he one or three – was able to evade first deadly nursery battles, then multiple attempts at assassination and poisonings, then the combined ire of other Marshals living on the fringe of the Kahilate. He seemed untouchable. Perhaps six or seven times, entire Dragonwings saw the Yellow-White Dragon struck down and killed, only for Thoralian to reappear in another place, or to apparently fight two battles simultaneously. Unfortunately, the old Marshal ruthlessly destroyed any who knew him in his hatchling or fledgling years, and all records. The legends are fragmentary and confused at best. They say he’s invincible; that he sucks the fire-souls out of egglings –” she shuddered involuntarily “– and inserts his own in their place. So powerful is that spirit, that he reappears in exactly the same form, power and size just a pawful of years later.”
Zuziana squeezed her monk’s fingers. Mercy.
“Having conquered mighty territories over the course of fifty years, Thoralian’s greed waxed greatly regarding the First Egg,” Brityx continued. “It is said he schemed and connived and corrupted Land Dragons to his cause, masterminding the situation in which the traitor Shurgal first retrieved the Egg, then betrayed all of the Dragonkind by availing himself of the corruption of urzul. By unknown means – doubtless great draconic trickery – it was the unremarkable Marshal Re’akka who prevailed in the battle for the First Egg. Harnessing its powers, he devoured his enemies including the Thoralians, and fled across the Rift before any could follow.”
“We can tell you something of that tale,” said Ri’arion. “As best we know, the Pygmy Dragoness defeated Re’akka and his armies of corrupt Dragon Assassins, after they murdered ninety-nine percent of the Dragonkind North of the Rift, but she lost the Egg once more to Shurgal –”
“Cursed be his name for all eternity!” rumbled Leandrial.
“– and the Egg is now back in Herimor,” the monk summarised. “Somehow, we ended up with a Marshal Thoralian North of the Rift –”
“While one or more Thoralians endured and laid the groundwork here in Herimor,” snarled Suk’itarix. “The timing of his renewed rise to power over the last decades is otherwise impossible.”
The companions exchanged troubled glances in the gloomy interior of Leandrial’s mouth.
“Or, once our Thoralian returned, and reunited with his shell-brothers, they became stronger than ever before,” suggested Ri’arion. “Trebly strong. It is a mystery to me how a Dragon could pass on his spirit like that, spawning perfect copies of himself as he wishes.”
Leandrial said, “She who holds the Egg, holds power. We must recapture the First Egg before Thoralian does. He is clearly allied with the S’gulzzi – but why should they gift the Egg to him? What would it benefit their kind, apart from domination of all Dragonkind South of the Rift-Storm? It seems too mean an ambition for a Dragon of Thoralian’s foul ilk.”
“Immortality?” said Zip.
“Thoralian seems to have that conundrum firmly in paw,” the monk snapped bitterly. He massaged his temples, wincing. “Sorry, love. Need to detoxify.”
“How I wish I’d had access to your penetrating insights a hundred years ago, Suk’itarix,” sighed Leandrial. “I can shed fire upon this matter of Thoralian’s proliferation, however. There’s an ancient word in the annals of my people; I know not the Island Standard equivalent, but in Dragonish, we say daimon. It translates as ‘ravaging spirit’, or ‘spirit of darkness’ – the exact converse of angel, which means ‘star spirit.’ In draconic lore, angel signifies the eternal light- or fire-spirit of the Dragonkind in a poetic or transcendental sense. A daimon is like the ravaging, unstoppable Nurguz of old – a daimonic spirit which was perhaps the very reason Fra’anior and his brethren fled our Island-World. Regardless, I propose that the Thoralians essentially consume or corrupt eggling-spirits as a vile form of procreation – accursed daimon-spawn!”
Of one accord, every Dragon listening shuddered, even the Land Dragoness.
Leandrial mused gloomily, “Still, I cannot penetrate the nature of his need for the First Egg.”
“It’s simple,” said Zip.
For once, she had the jump on her sharp-as-talons companions and she could not celebrate it. She wrapped her arms around her torso, shivering with a chill that settled deeper than her marrow. No, no, no …
“What? What, precious Remoy?” Ri’arion asked, drawing her against his hard-muscled chest.
“It’s an egg. Consider what’s inside. What would Thoralian most want to daimonize – if that’s the right word – if not the young of the Ancient Dragonkind?”
* * * *
Chained to a dungeon-like wall by manacles at wrist and ankle designed to contain a Shapeshifter’s Dragon-enhanced strength, Ardan faced Marshal Yar’nax’tix. Through bleeding lips, he said, “I am addicted to powerful women, just not to you.”
The Marshal reeked of glamour-magic. She had dressed up for the occasion – filmy silks, perfume, jewelled slippers, the whole seductive approach. The Lavanias collar compressed his mind like the business end of a blacksmith’s vice, promising him realms of endless ecstasy if he would only yield to her charms.
Thankfully, Ardan had learned a few of Ri’arion’s mind tricks. Not that she was a bad-looking woman. She was short, muscular and curvaceous, which the silks made amply clear. Tixi looked every inch the Shapeshifter Dragoness, with a magical spark in her arresting dark eyes, set off by high cheekbones and the longest hair he had yet seen in Herimor, two inches of black curls framing a cruel yet somehow alluring visage. Crudely put, he had placed a vascular restriction on that part of him which she hoped would salute her glamour-enhanced appeal, magnified many-fold by the collar’s power. He clung onto the ward controlling his physiological response, but concealed it behind thoughts of the scrolls contained in Gi’ishior’s library.
How did she achieve that amplifying effect? Did the collar feed off his innate magic?
Ardan allowed a smirk to touch his lips. “Well, this is getting us precisely nowhere, isn’t it, Marshal? Don’t take it personally.”
“I interviewed your boys,” she snarled maliciously.
“You hurt them?” he blurted out.
Tixi laughed mockingly. “No. Nor your dragonet, though I considered both avenues. But Lurax, with some encouragement at the tip of my Dragoness’ fore-talon –” she supplied a crude, universally abhorrent gesture “– told me everything.”
Ardan threw himself against the manacles, screaming every foul curse he knew.
The Marshal let him rage for a minute, before calling upon the House wards. Ardan’s body convulsed helplessly against the manacles as a sensation like a Dragon’s lightning attack jangled his nerves. His teeth smashed together and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Even when she stopped, his body continued to spasm and twitch for over two minutes.
“I know about this Aranya, this Amethyst Dragoness you hold in such high regard,” sneered the Marshal. “I’m hunting her already. And when I find her …”
Spears of pain pierced his mind, followed by a rain of excruciating fire. His body streamed with sweat, which now steamed off his skin as the heat built beyond endurance.
“I’ll burn her like I’m burning you now. How’s this, Dragon. Feel like a volcano?”
GRRAAAARRRGGH!!
Dimly, faraway, he heard her say, “Yield, Dragon, before you break your own bones.”
Crimson washed his vision; tears as thick as blood; perhaps they were blood, squeezed from his bulging eyes as Ardan fought the pain. Every tendon in his body thrummed under the terrible, wracking impetus of the collar’s untrammelled command of his body and mind; every muscle tried to twist itself around its neighbour. Warmth leaked down his leg. Ardan had thought himself too strong, incapable of ever losing control of his bodily functions, but the agony drove rational thought from his mind, a wedge between body and soul. Tixi bore down even more heavily. He jerked against the manacles over and over, tearing his own skin. He was losing, losing the will to survive, to stand against …
